APP OF THE DAY: Pubtran (Android)

You know the situation, you need to get somewhere - in London, in this case - and you don't know how. Finding out is usually hard, not because the journey is different, but because there are lots of different modes of transport, and not usually one place to see how you combine them to get to your destination.

Enter Pubtran, which does exactly that thing that you couldn't previously do. Here you can plan a journey, get information about it and see how long it will take. It is, without doubt, the best app for anyone who needs to travel around London. And while we know most of you don't live in London, it's one to download for those times you visit the capital.

Pubtran

The most useful part of Pubtran is the route planner. Give it a location - it can use cell data and GPS to find you - and tell it where you want to go. The app then has a look around, works out the quickest router, then tells you how to get where you're going. It's simplicity is amazing, but it's usefulness is almost impossible to overstate.

What's more, you can chose to exclude certain modes of transport. So, if you only want to go via the river, that's fine. Or if the driverless DLR scares the life out of you, excluding it is no trouble at all.

But that's not all. You also get Tube status updates. So any delays can be avoided before you set off into the Underground. Even better, the app can give you live Tube departure times, so if you're leaving to hit the Underground, you can get an idea how long it is before your next train will be departing. This is handy on the lines that head to the outskirts of London. With Wi-Fi appearing underground now, this app is becoming even more useful.

There are maps, too. You have to download them manually - this is very probably a copyright issue, other Tube map-containing apps have fallen foul of this before. But once they're downloaded, you can refer to them offline too. So if you're out of Wi-Fi reach, then the app will be there waiting for you. There's even a handy tourist map, to tell you where the London hotspots are.

Starting off as a spotty youth who worked in Currys, he moved to the BBC (after getting a degree) where he was an editorial wrangler. A stint writing for Top Gear and co-presenting Sky One's Gadget Geeks completes the picture. Ian has since left Pocket-lint.